The Fixer
by Madebyme
Summary: Set in season two. A hunt hits close to home and forces the brothers to have a conversation neither thought they ever would. Hurt Sam and Big Brother Dean!


**Disclaimer** – I don't own Supernatural that privilege belongs to CW, Kripke and Co, I'm simply borrowing them for a while. I'm not making a profit, this is just for fun and all the standard disclaimers apply.

**Summary** – Set in season two. A hunt hits close to home and forces the brothers to have a conversation neither thought they ever would. Hurt Sam and Big Brother Dean!

**Thank You** - A massive thank you to the always awesome **Harrigan** for betaing this and for all her help. I've tweaked this so any mistakes are mine.

**A/N** - This was written for h/c bingo card at spn_littlebro at Livejournal and fills the wild card square (lacerations/cuts). There's a warning for first aid and a chick flick moment! I hope you enjoy!

**The Fixer**

Wiping away the condensation from the mirror with his hand, Sam twists his torso and lifts his arm, hissing at the inflamed skin across his left side and back.

Since his shower, the bruising across his ribs has steadily darkened from red to purple, and some of cuts are leaking watery streams of blood down his skin. Reaching down, Sam grazes his fingers over a nasty gash on his side, a sharp edge of glass nicking his fingertip.

"Damn it!" Sam sucks the finger, tasting blood on the back of his tongue.

From this angle it's nearly impossible to tell how deep the cuts are and even though he hates it, he can't clean them by himself. But the last thing he needs right now is to feed into whatever the hell is going on with his brother, who's been sticking to him like glue ever since they met Lily and decided they had a case.

Taking a deep breath he pulls on his jeans, tosses his blood stained shirt in the trash, and opens the bathroom door, a blanket of cold prickling across his bare skin.

Dean's sitting on the foot of Sam's bed, the first aid kit resting on his knee as he channel surfs. "You ready?"

"I can do it, I-"

"The hell you can," Dean interrupts, flicking off the TV.

Sam huffs stubbornly and pinches his lips before finally allowing Dean to usher him back into the bathroom.

There's no jibes, no smart ass remarks about letting himself get thrown through a glazed door like some sort of a rookie. Just one of the many things that's been off about his brother since Sam found the case in the paper a few days ago.

"Some of these are nasty," Dean says, his eyes locking onto Sam's left side before drifting to his back, cool fingers brushing over the heated bruising.

And there it is again because Dean doesn't sound pissed like he normally would, and he isn't laying into him about how dangerous open wounds can be and how quickly infections kick in. Instead Dean sounds... careful, like he's trying to be considerate by acting in exactly the opposite way he usually does.

"There's still glass in some of them," Sam says, testing the waters.

But Dean stays silent; no lectures, nothing. Instead he rummages through the kit for what Sam assumes are the tweezers.

"You shouldn't need stitches but we'll keep an eye on a few of them." Dean sounds calm, like he's downed a handful of sedatives. Maybe he doesn't know what to say, or he does, and he doesn't want to make the situation any worse.

Silence hangs heavily in the cramped bathroom as Dean gets closer, his hands steady as he pulls out a shard of glass from the wound and drops it into the trash can by his feet. Gripping the tweezers, Dean pulls on the edge of another piece of glass before tugging on it, and this one must be deeper because Sam can't stop the surprised groan of pain falling over his dry lips before he finally hears a ping in the trash can.

Dean looks up at Sam, throwing him a worried look, his jaw clenched tightly.

"Quit it," Sam snaps.

Dean wipes away the stream of blood from the cut and adds a little pressure. "Quit what?"

"Looking at me like that." Sam takes a deep breath. "Like I'm about to shatter into a thousand pieces."

"I'm not-"

"Just quit it."

Dean pulls out half a dozen more pieces of glass in silence, which just pisses Sam off more because since when does Dean actually listen when he says that, especially without sort some of smart ass comment.

Taking a deep breath, Sam exhales through his nose and closes his eyes. There's a tearing of wrappers before the sharp smell of antiseptic hits his nostrils.

"This is gonna sting like a bitch," Dean's says before something cool and damp swipes across the cuts on his back, pulling a hiss from Sam's lips.

Dean repeats the action with another wipe before taking a small step back and raising his hands in surrender. "You know what? I can't do this."

Sam looks down at his side, the cuts are clean and barely bleeding. "But you're nearly done."

Dean stares at him hard, eyebrows raised. "Seriously? That's what you think this is about?"

Sam just shrugs, because honestly he's got no clue what's going on with his brother; he's never been quiet and placating, ever.

Dean shakes his head and looks down at the floor before slowly lifting his head. "This case hits too close to home for you. To your old life, with law school and Jess-"

The mention of her name wedges a knot of grief and guilt into Sam's throat, tight and suffocating. And for a moment, he can't speak, can't breathe, can't form a single thought.

Dean's still staring at him, his eyes shadowed with concern. "You went engagement ring shopping, Sam. You never said a word about it."

Sam's mind wanders to Lily, her puffy red-rimmed eyes, the diamond on her engagement finger and the wedding scrap book on her coffee table that he'd tried really hard not to look at.

Jack Winters was a year older than him, studying law of all things. Through a sodden tissue his fiancée Lily had told them how he'd only proposed a few months ago and how they'd been planning a life together; law school, internships, a summer wedding and a honeymoon in Hawaii.

And now the whole case was screwing Sam up in ways he hadn't thought about for a long time. His dreams of a career in law, a white picket fence and kids at his feet, all shared with a blonde-haired, blue-eyed girl who didn't like to her dunk her Oreo's in milk or leave a room without kissing him first.

And maybe Dean's got a point about this being too close to home.

"But getting married?" Dean's words are casual, biting through the silence as he meticulously triple checks for more glass before picking up the antibacterial cream. "That's pretty... big. Y'know?"

A part of Sam had been expecting this to come up eventually, especially after what the demon dressed in their Dad had said in the cabin all those weeks ago. "Yeah, it is."

"And I guess you and Jess talked about it, right? I mean you were dating and you lived together, so... "

Sam stared down at his blood underneath his fingernails. "We talked about a lot of things."

"Like?" Dean says as he smears the cream across every individual cut.

"Like where'd we live, how long we'd wait before starting a family. That kinda stuff."

Sam wrinkles his nose as Dean covers a tender cut in an extra thick layer of cream before ripping the wrapper off a bandage. Dean places it over the deeper cuts and begins taping it in place with some medical tape.

"I didn't keep it from you on purpose," Sam says because he can see the shimmer of hurt flash across Dean's features, knows that hearing from a demon that your brother was planning to marry a girl must have stung a little. Especially when Dean's whole existence revolves around family.

"She didn't know." Sam says it quickly so that he can't back out or take it back, no matter how much he wants to.

Dean looks up. "Come again?"

Sam pulls a hand through his hair, his mouth suddenly so dry that he actually thinks twice before spitting out the words. "Jess. She didn't know that I went ring shopping, that I was going to ask her dad's permission at Christmas and then maybe come New Year's..."

Sam lets the words drift, knows by the look on Dean's face that his brother knows exactly where he was heading and why he has to stop.

"I'm sorry. I-"

"I didn't tell anyone, Dean," Sam says, picking out empty wrappers from the kit and dropping them in the trash. "No one knew and I wanted it that way. It's got nothing to do with keeping stuff from you; it's not personal. I just... I needed this for me."

"OK."

But is isn't OK because Sam knows his brother, and Dean carries stuff like this and lets it fester and tear him up inside. They're brothers and he doesn't want to keep stuff from the only family he has left. "I should have told you. It's not like I haven't thought about it. I came close in New York, with Sarah but..."

"But?"

"I couldn't." Sam takes a deep breath and stares at the ugly pattern on the wall tiles. "It just felt... wrong. How can I tell anybody else when I never got the chance to tell Jess, the one person who really mattered?"

Dean takes a breath and sticks another piece of tape onto the bandage. "Well, you guys talked about your future, about white picket fences and rugrats so I'm guessing she already knew. Probably had a dress and a church all picked out since she was four. I mean that's what chicks do, right?"

"Yeah, I guess."

"So maybe she didn't know exactly when you'd pop the question but she knew you. She knew you'd do all the traditional, down-on-one-knee kinda crap, knew that you'd pick the right time and place because that's the kinda guy you are, Sammy."

Sam ducks his head and sniffs.

"You might not have got the chance to ask her to spend her life with you, but she was already doing it. She'd already said yes."

Dean claps a hand on his shoulder and Sam feels something in his chest click together, like something has shifted and found itself a home. He can feel his adam's apple bob and he really doesn't know what to say, knows that this is as close as Dean has ever gotten to a chick flick moment, so he stares at Dean until their eyes meet. "Thanks, Dean."

Dean shrugs a shoulder. "It's what family is for, right?"

Sam smiles.

"Just don't go getting any ideas," Dean says as he smooths down the edges of the bandage before closing the lid of the first aid kit. "This was a once in a lifetime kinda deal, and now you've used it."

Sam snorts as Dean walks over to Sam's bed and rummages through his bag. When he turns around he's holding one of Sam's shirts. "Maybe we should just head out of town."

"What? We're in the middle of a hunt. We're not going anywhere."

Dean steps forward and holds the shirt open. "We don't have to do this; we can pass it onto Bobby, get him to finish it."

"No." Sam turns around and pushes his arms through the shirt, grimacing as the cuts under the bandage burn. "I want to do this."

And he really does. Call it what you want: an act of self-inflicted torture or a misguided attempt at closure, but something is calling out to him. Maybe it's Lily or Jack, or maybe even Jess, but it's something that he needs to do.

"Then you've got some research to do, tough guy," Dean says over his shoulder as he crosses the room and collapses onto his bed, stretching out his limbs before something on the nightstand catches his attention. "Sweet! Magic fingers!"

Sam snorts. Digging out a handful of quarters from the back pocket of his jeans, he drops them into Dean's palm, watching as his brother feeds them into the meter, eyes bright and grin wide.

After all, that's what family is for.

The End

**A/N –** I hope you all enjoyed the trip down memory lane. Until next time, take care, Madebyme


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